TRANSCRIPT
(NOTE: This summary and transcription has been automatically generated through an AI program. Consequently, this summary and transcript may not match everything you hear in the podcast episode, and it may contain errors such as spelling, grammar, word choice, etc., due to the limitations of current AI technology.)
Hey everyone, welcome to the next episode here of Midnight Carmelite on season 10. Uh, so I, as I promised, I wanted to go through kind of bring some academic work, scholarly work, art, peer-reviewed articles. I wanted to kind of, you know, um, draw specific insights that I think are relevant for the spiritual life. Just like kind of like little pieces or, you know, kind of really essentials, I’d call them, to help with how we understand our relationship with God and today I want to talk about the physical absence of God for us is a struggle how you know if we’re so what I mean by that is this is that like in the earlier episodes you know in the last episode we were talking about how you know the motivation of the heart is what determines a charitable action that means that that person who’s actually doing a charitable action is actually growing in you know God’s presence in other words growing in grace and supernatural virtues, faith, hope and charity. And what happens though is that we we have to remember absence of God for the person. In other words, like for example, are you experiencing active night of the senses? Are you experiencing passive night of the senses? Like there’s a certain darkness here, absence. But but I want to point out that absence is not identical to nothingness. And I think this is really important. For example, let’s say You know, you’re married and your spouse takes a trip. Okay, your spouse is now absent physically, right? But your marriage isn’t absent. You’re still married to them, right? So, there’s a positive present relation, right? Let’s say you think of your, you know, you’re thinking of your your spouse while they’re gone. What’s happening there is you’re you’re dealing with the absence of how this person is present to you physically but that absence is kind of framing your experience and understanding of your relationship. So they say for example absence makes the heart grow fonder. Well what it’s doing is it’s it’s the absence is is focusing in it’s showing you the bounds of your love that absence that physical absence. So let me give you an example. This is straight from my article. So I’m just going to read from my article. Imagine you’re reading a novel. The words that are on the page are being read as present while the words already read are remembered as past in your reading but may or may not be present in the context of the story. Yet those abstent words in reading contribute to the experience of the novel. We anticipate how the plot will unfold as more words are read and we remember preceding words that give more context to what is presently happening in the plot. This interaction forms our understanding of the novel and how we experience the world being presented to us. So therefore, we become kind of attuned to the writer style and word choice and emotional cadence. In other words, the absence of previous read words that are a part of your relationship to this novel, the book you’re reading inform, limit, give scope to amplify the presence of the novel itself as well as the present words that you’re reading. So, how does this apply to the spiritual life? Well, you’re you’re reading scripture and some words strike you they really touch your heart. You you know you you stop in lectio deina you pray and then you rest you you know contemplate you you you know rest in what those words mean and in the love and presence of God that’s resting in that scope that kind of absence and in other words you’re resting in the fact that you’re not experiencing God as in the beatotific vision but you’re resting in God through faith right John the cross says faith is approximate means union with God so that’s what’s going on It’s just absence. We we think we again we think of absence as you know my a prosaic example my bank account is absent as much money as I’d like it to have right people say that right or they’ll say you know uh I wish I had a cheeseburger but that you know cheeseburger is absent from my dinner plate I wish you know I wish it was that right but but like besides those things sorry I think it’s funny um besides those things I think that we what we’re really doing here is we’re we’re it shows that absence is is kind of um again I I keep I keep kind of repeating myself here. It’s giving like a boundaries. It’s almost like jumping into a sandbox. The absence is the is the wood or the metal of the sandbox and you’re kind of in in tuning yourself and figuring out what is present to you in the sandbox. What you know when you’re a kid, what toys and that type of thing, what sand castles or whatever what you’re digging and And I think all these things together are really important for the spiritual life. So how does this connect to the presence then of the motivation of the heart? Well, a person who prays understands God is absent and trusts in that absence due you know but knows where to be present to God in front of the Eucharist for example to be physically present or to be present spiritually in time of prayer. You can’t say something’s absent unless it’s scoping something that’s present. And people who say that something’s absent, that can tell you a lot about them because that’s it’s speaking to their desires of what they would like to be present. So I’m going to stop here. I think this is kind of a bit like quite a bit, but I think just think about I guess for this week, just think about where are there things that are maybe physically absent in your life, but they actually enrich your life, right? So again, like the experience I should say. So you have a spouse, they take a trip, you miss them, you want them to be there, but that puts like it it almost gives greater strength to your to your love for them because you desire to see them, right? You have this fulfillment you want to do. So anyway, just think about these things and we’ll keep going next week.
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